DANCE REVIEW : Folklorico Is a Window to Mexico’s Past

Whatever the original Ballet Folklorico de Mexico may mean to Mexicans or Mexican-Americans, it has always provided the outsider- yanqui with an unequalled point-of-entry to the riches of a fabulous culture.

Where rival companies cater to specialized tastes with no-nonsense transcriptions of folk material, Amalia Hernandez’s dance-spectacles address the widest possible public with choreographic depictions of folklore steeped in the romance of the Mexican past.

Because her company had not graced our stages in 10 years, the shock of Hernandez’s distinctly personal view of her heritage gave a special excitement to the performances in Shrine Auditorium over the weekend.

Here were imaginative evocations of vanished tribal peoples (“Tenochtitlan”) and intense tributes to the courage that won Mexico its independence (“The Revolution”). Here, too, were fiesta sequences embellished with stagecraft designed to involve the audience more directly in the sense of celebration: Explosions of confetti for “Jalisco” and huge carnival figures dancing in the aisles for “Fiesta in Tlacotalpan.”

As usual, some of Hernandez’s inventions proved deeply truthful without being especially accurate. More exotic than Brigadoon or Shangri-la, her vision of the gulf culture of the Veracruz area, for example, conjured up in a rhythmic vortex a timeless dream of ele-

gance, sensuality, love of life. Certainly it outclassed the muggy, decaying and pretentious city of Veracruz itself (a place redeemed only by its seafood) and the depressing industrial towns in the vicinity.

Hernandez’s style often abstracted her folk resources, paring away gestural specifics and invariably emphasizing large-scale group statements. A suite sometimes began intimately (the Zacatecas rope-dance sequence, for instance, with its focus on solo dexterity, or the quiet elopement at the start of the Tehuantepec suite, with its concentration on the lovers’ feelings) but sooner or later the multiplication factor set in. She took no chances and sometimes sacrificed the warmth and charm of Mexican dance in an obsession to overwhelm.

Although the dancing on Saturday occasionally looked impersonal and over-driven in just this way, the technical skill of the company remained impeccable. In particular, the mass footwork of “The Concheros” (traveling passages with twisty kicks and surprising beaten steps) had an ideal combination of urgency and precision--and the dancers wore their feathered, Pre-Columbian-style costumes with an easy authority they had not always commanded on past tours.

In alternating passages for Angel Padilla and an eight-man corps, Hernandez’s version of the Yaqui “Deer Dance” exploited pure-dance contrasts over dramatic/narrative values. This deer not only survived but his dancing stayed free of the balletic distortion that sometimes infects other companies’ stagings of the work.

The alternation between live and canned music always proved jarring--and the absence of a chorus regrettable--but there was no doubt on Saturday that this Ballet Folklorico had been away too long and still filled a genuine need. At 70, Hernandez continues to respond to Mexican traditions with a sense of wonder and passionate involvement. And, in the brilliantly synthesized hyper-reality of her best choreography, so do we.